Hervey Bay & Fraser Island

We arrived to yet another day of beautiful sunshine in Hervey bay...and the place hasnt changed a bit in the 9 years since we have been before, it was usual check in go to bottle shop and get loaded up with your crates and boxes of wine for the next 3 days camping!

We were arranged into groups of 9 and 10 and assigned 3 drivers per van..the vans have been slightly updated and now look more like unwanted ice cream vans with the insides ripped out, but class all the same and good for taking batterings! Our group was made up of the 2 of us, a friend we had met jess form the Uk, 4 lads from the UK as well that looked like a wannabe boy band, a girl from Limerick and a girl from Holland...
And because most of the lads had either forgotten their licenses or couldnt drive the 3 named drivers were me, jess and Patrice from Limerick - the lads were all delighted as you can imagine getting 3 birds to drive them in a huge 4WD ice cream van...haha

I had the pleasure of going first and had to first drive the thing onto the ferry and then work through the gears and 2WD and 4WD changes for getting onto the island... so as you can imagine it was only a matter of time before disaster broke! I hadnt really been listening when they told me how to maneouvre the gear changes so when i got it into 4WD and started in 2nd gear up a steep sandy hill with my foot to the floor, the clutch didnt appreciate it and smoke started billowing out of the van and it didnt smell good at all! lol It was hilarious as their were cars and vans behind me shitting themselves as the handbrake wasnt the best either...and all i could say was " Ger... help me, can you fix it!.."

After working out that 1st gear was needed for starting we were off... and for the next hour i drove us through the rainforest bit of the island up and down the sandy hills for about and hour and a half and the guys got tossed about like a wet lettuce in the back!
Once we reached the beach beer cans were opened and many cigarettes were smoked!

We made our way up the beach as the tide was coming in and we needed to beat it to get to the first campsite for the night, so drivers changed we made our way to Eli Creek - natural fresh water that you can wade up and down and is totally clear..and the Maheno ship wreck which is a huge boat sitting further up the beach that as we seen was housing a shark ray which was cool even though no one would be dared to touch it!

First night camping was cool all 4 vans that got the ferry together camped together so we had a huge floor carpet thing going on and all the tents were in a huge circle with all the camping stoves full of BBQ stuff at each corner with torches hanging from ropes as lights. Max was our chef and to us at that time he was defintely a match for Gordon Ramsay as we were all starvin and didnt care how much sand was in the sausages... it was just like electric picnic dec... you were missed!

A long drop of course was the lads first duty which they perfected i have to say even though after a lot of drink it was rarely used!
The usual drinking games initiated and joke telling ensued, we actually had one guy from Israel - Rammy who was "Borat", so he was just hilarious to listen to whatever he said especially trying to get him to play the drinking name game..

The following morning we had to get up at 7am as the ride was due in at 9 and we had to get up the beach or be stranded at the bottom for day.. so havoc broke out and it was like the wacky races trying to get the van packed up with tents, food, cookers and people!

We made it up to Indian head for about 10 and the first thing our van did was to cook a fry up! and then we did the tourist thing and went walking and then over to the champagne pools, it was a class day and the pools were fab so we stayed there most of the day and when we werent in the water me and Ger had everyone playing sticks! (remember Kev's back garden BBQ..lol)

We had to leave here then to get back down the beach before the tide came in again, so off we went driving again and got a spot camping for the night so wasting no time time the food was out and the drinking started again!
A canopy had to be made as the rain had stared but it was class and none of us were allowed go to bed unless all the alocohol was finished, so after many drinking games including the famous - "can you eat 3 crackers in one minute without taking a drink" in our case Ryvita was used... we managed to polish off 20 litres of Gune/wine and 68 cans of tooheys new..
Got introduced to a new drinking game as well called horseracing which is fab so its one to bring home definitely... great night had by all though!

Day 3 was hangover day as we got up and tried to head to Lake Wabby... after an hour scenic walking but cursing ourselves for not going the shorter route to aid the headaches, we arrived at the lake and were instantly cured when we dived into the water - it was lush...

After walking back the short way over the amazing dunes - and i tried a sound of music rendition.. we all headed for the famous Lake mackenzie for some more lounging...

Lunch was a fantastic few hours in the picnic area of Lake mackenzie where we basically cooked all the food we had left and eat everything in sight seeing it would have gone to waste - a huge lizard even came to join us!

The ferry from Kingfisher Bay back to Hervey was at 4 so once back to the hostel and van returned, the hostel organised a pizza and movie night for all of us - jst what we all needed, we were off th enext morning at 9 for another bus to Brisbane but Fraser had been fab and massive craic was had!!